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Azerbaijani Opposition Leader Convicted on Bogus Charges
This month, a court in Azerbaijan convicted the prominent opposition leader Tofig Yagublu on fabricated forgery and fraud charges, sentencing him to nine years in prison. Yagublu’s prosecution and imprisonment is part of the Azerbaijani government’s relentless efforts to silence dissenting voices in the country.
Yagublu, 64, is a former journalist and a senior member of the National Council of Democratic Forces, a coalition of opposition parties and pro-democracy activists.
Following Yagublu’s arrest in December 2023, police searched his home and claim to have found €5,000 (about US$5,427), 2,500 Azerbaijani manat (about US$1,470), and an unspecified amount in US dollars. The authorities allege that Yagublu was involved in a scheme to supply fake documents to a third party to support an asylum application. Yagublu and his family deny having had the money in their possession and believe the police planted it during their search.
This is not Yagublu’s first time in prison. For years, the authorities have targeted him with politically motivated charges. He spent three years behind bars on false incitement charges. Following his release in 2016, he was arrested again in October 2019 after participating in an unsanctioned rally. In 2021 he was subjected to ill-treatment in custody in retaliation for his activism.
Yagublu is among dozens of opposition figures, journalists, rights defenders, scholars, and activists against whom the authorities have brought a wave of politically motivated arrests.
Since December 2024, the courts have delivered lengthy prison sentences against at least eight journalists and activists, including Aziz Orucov, director of Kanal 13, and Teymur Karimov, director of Kanal 11; labor rights activists Mohyaddin Orucov and Afiaddin Mammadov; political activists Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and Rail Abbasov; human rights lawyer Ilhamiz Guliyev; and human rights defender Elshan Karimov. The charges range from illegal construction, extortion, drug trafficking, and hooliganism to financial crimes, including fraud.
The Azerbaijani government’s pattern of using the criminal justice system to retaliate against its critics is well documented, including by the European Court of Human Rights. The authorities should immediately free Yagublu and all other unjustly imprisoned journalists and activists and allow them to operate without undue government interference.
Landmark Ruling on Trans Rights in Poland
In a significant step toward affirming the rights of transgender people in Poland, the country’s Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling that eliminates the requirement for trans people to involve their parents in gender recognition proceedings.
Until now, transgender individuals – whether child or adult – seeking to change their gender marker on official documents were required to sue their parents. This was due to a convoluted legal claim that there needs to be two opposing parties in any civil action, which seeking to change a gender marker is classified as. This added unnecessary distress and legal complexities, including for trans people whose parents have died.
The ruling, welcomed by Polish civil society organizations including Campaign against Homophobia and Trans-Fuzja Foundation, underscores the need for Poland to streamline gender recognition procedures, aligning them more closely with international human rights standards. Indeed, uncertainties remain, including whether married transgender people must divorce in order to obtain legal gender recognition, since Polish law, despite human rights obligations otherwise, does not recognize same-sex marriages.
This ruling comes at a time when trans rights in Poland remain a contentious issue. Far-right rhetoric denigrates gender identity recognition and broader lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Poland, rejecting international and European standards, as well as evolving medical consensus. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health has long advocated for simplified gender recognition procedures, warning that onerous barriers can “harm physical and mental health.”
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Poland is a party, guarantees the rights to privacy and to equal recognition before the law, which incorporate the right to legal gender recognition, free from harmful or disproportionate obstacles.
The European Court of Human Rights, has in multiple judgements stated that states have “a positive obligation to provide quick, transparent and accessible procedures” for changing registered sex markers and failure to do so violates the right to private life. The European Union’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020-2025) similarly promotes “accessible legal gender recognition based on self-determination and without age restriction.”
While Poland’s progress is commendable, the battle for trans rights is far from over. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who promisedduring his campaign to introduce a simplified gender recognition process, now has an opportunity to follow through in consultation with Polish trans people. His government should act swiftly to introduce legislation upholding trans people’s full right to self-identification, free from onerous requirements.
Thai Rights Lawyer’s 2004 ‘Disappearance’ Unsolved
For more than two decades, nine different Thai prime ministers have failed to bring those responsible for the enforced disappearance of prominent human rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit to justice.
Official investigations established that Somchai was abducted in Bangkok on March 12, 2004. He has not been seen since.
Substantial evidence implicated a group of police officers, who allegedly sought retaliation for Somchai’s involvement in lawsuits regarding widespread police torture of Muslim suspects in Thailand’s insurgency-ridden southern border provinces.
In January 2006, then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra publicly said: “The DSI [Ministry of Justice’s Department of Special Investigation] is working on this case and murder charges are being considered. I know Somchai is dead, circumstantial evidence indicated that ... and there were more than four [police] officers implicated by the investigation.”
But in December 2015, the Supreme Court acquitted five police officers charged in the case. The ruling has also barred Somchai’s family from acting as a coplaintiff in efforts to obtain justice, stating that there is no evidence showing he is dead or otherwise incapable of bringing the case himself.
Thailand is a state party to the United Nations International Convention against Enforced Disappearance. In 2023, Thailand’s own Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act went into effect. Yet the current government of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has made no commitment to solve Somchai’s case.
This lack of political will to resolve enforced disappearances is evident in all other Thai cases as well. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances currently records 77 cases in Thailand that have not been resolved.
Angkhana Neelapaijit, Somchai’s wife and chairperson of Thailand’s Senate Human Rights Committee, told Human Rights Watch that Thai authorities have pressured at least 15 families in recent months to withdraw their cases from the UN working group, seemingly to improve the country’s reputation now that Thailand has joined the UN Human Rights Council for the 2025-2027 term.
Efforts to silence families of those forcibly disappeared will not make demands for justice disappear. The families of Somchai and other victims need to know that the Thai government is doing all it can to learn the fate of their loved ones and bring those responsible to account.
South Sudan: Opposition Leaders, Others, Detained
(Johannesburg) – South Sudanese authorities have arrested at least 22 political and military personnel in the wake of violent clashes that started in mid-February 2025 between government and armed groups in Upper Nile, Human Rights Watch said today. These recent developments have plunged the country into political crisis.
“The lack of transparency and legitimate concerns about the legality of the arrests and detention of opposition leaders and others fuel instability in an already fragile security context,” said Nyagoah Tut Pur, South Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities should immediately reveal the fate and whereabouts of detainees and ensure their due process rights, including by bringing them before a properly constituted and impartial court.”
The people arrested since March 4, are aligned with First Vice President Riek Machar, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO). The timing of these detentions coincides with a political crisis in Nasir, Upper Nile, where clashes between government forces and armed youth militia, also known as the White Army, displaced thousands of civilians. The area is a stronghold for supporters of Machar who has long been in opposition to President Kiir.
The South Sudanese government should immediately end the enforced disappearance or incommunicado detention of everyone linked to the opposition who has been detained since the first week of March and ensure full and strict respect for their due process rights, Human Rights Watch said.
On March 4, military authorities arrested and detained Lieutenant General Gabriel Duop Lam, deputy chief of staff of the unified army structures, who also serves as acting chief of Staff for SPLA-IO. Officials also disarmed and detained five of his bodyguards, a credible source said. The whereabouts of the six men is unknown. The detention or other deprivation of liberty of an individual, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or to reveal the fate or whereabouts of the person deprived of their liberty, constitutes an enforced disappearance under international law, a crime subject to an absolute prohibition in all circumstances.
On March 5, at 2 a.m., armed National Security Service (NSS) officers took Puot Kang Chol, the petroleum minister, from his house in Juba, along with at least seven others, without explanation and drove them away, a credible witness said. The seven include: a friend, Camilo Gatmach; bodyguards Nelson Malou, Kun Tut, Peter Magong; and three family members Koang Puk, Biluny Puk, and Buay Thiechuong. The NSS officers had initially arrested Chol with one of his bodyguards at around 11 p.m. on March 4 but brought him back, a credible witness said.
The eight men were initially held at the NSS Riverside (Operations) facility then transferred to the NSS headquarters, also known as Blue House, credible sources say.
On March 6, the NSS arrested Thomas Jal Thomas, deputy inspector general of the police, and James Duop Gatleak, his deputy, in their offices and took them to the Riverside detention site but released them after a few hours, according to a credible source.
That same day, 11 armed NSS officers took Stephen Par Kuol, the peacebuilding minister, from his office along with three staff members, a witness said. They bundled them into two Landcruiser pickup trucks with other armed officers and drove away. The four men were released on early morning of March 7.
Also on March 6, NSS officers arrested and detained Mam Pal Dhuor, a member of SPLA-IO, at Juba International Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Kampala, a credible source said.
Meanwhile the situation in Nasir deteriorated. On March 7, armed men attacked a UN helicopter on a mission to rescue wounded soldiers in Nasir, killing a crew member and injuring two others. President Kiir also announced that a well-known army general, Majur Dak along with 27 other soldiers who were to be evacuated, were also killed during the attack.
The same day, the army issued a circular, seen by Human Rights Watch, deploying forces in six major road junctions leading to and from the capital, Juba. Heavy deployment at the residence of Riek Machar in the evenings is apparently ongoing.
Puok Both Baluang, the spokesperson for Riek Machar, told Human Rights Watch that as of March 10 they knew of 22 men affiliated with the SPLA-IO – including party members, staff, family, and bodyguards – detained by NSS and Military Intelligence, many of whose fate or whereabouts is unknown.
Media reported that Gatwech Lam Puoch, an SPLA-IO member of parliament for Nasir county, was arrested on March 11 and is detained at the Blue House.
Spokespeople for the NSS and the army did not respond to requests for comment. At a news conference on March 5, Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, said that, “If anybody is arrested, it is for a reason.” And on March 8, the NSS spokesperson announced that it had arrested people with “verified links to the situation in Nasir, Ulang, and surrounding areas” following extensive “intelligence” and promised more arrests.
The National Security Service operates with limited legal and judicial oversight and de facto impunity. The service is responsible for enforced disappearances as well as the incommunicado detention and torture and ill-treatment of detainees. It has also unlawfully conducted surveillance.
The government should revise the definition of “crimes against the state” and remove the security service authority to arrest and detain people, limit its authority for search, seizure, and surveillance, and bring it in line with the constitution and international human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said.
The government has in the past used trumped up charges of crimes against the state such as treason, publishing false information, and insulting the president, to restrict freedom of expression, assembly and association, such as peaceful exercise of political opposition, or public criticism of state policy and actions. Prosecutions and trials have been marred by human rights abuses and political interference.
The government should immediately make public the grounds for and evidence to justify the recent arrests. All detainees should immediately be brought before an independent judge to scrutinize the legality of the arrests, and to determine if they should be released or if they can continue to be lawfully detained.
The international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) should press the South Sudanese authorities to uphold human rights, including the immediate end to any and all enforced disappearance and bringing the detainees before a court, Human Rights Watch said.
“South Sudanese authorities should cease arbitrary detention of opposition members and other actions that amount to harassment and not use the security institutions as a tool of oppression,” Pur said. “International and regional actors like the African Union should insist that authorities uphold human rights obligations as they seek to de-escalate political tensions.”
Proposed EU Return Rules for Migrants are Cruel, Unrealistic
The European Commission’s proposal for a new "Returns Regulation" for undocumented migrants, announced March 11, is both cruel and unrealistic.
It would mean longer detention, harsher treatment, and fewer rights for people, without any meaningful promise of more repatriations. It also signals the European Union’s deepening obsession with off-loading its migration responsibilities, no matter the cost to human beings or the EU’s stated values.
The draft regulation would allow for the detention of unaccompanied children and families with children, as well as single adults, for as long as two years while awaiting deportation. Some adults could be held even longer. The list of reasons for detention is so broad that it could justify massive incarceration. Indeed, the draft allows member states to deviate from basic guarantees around detention if systems face a vaguely defined “unforeseen heavy burden”.
There is lip service to alternatives to detention, but measures proposed such as electronic tagging are invasive and do not take into account established good practices that ensure compliance while respecting rights.
Also, after someone receives a removal order, it would become easier for governments to deny free legal aid and make it harder to suspend the deportation during appeal.
Then there’s the much-discussed “return hubs.” The proposed regulation greenlights sending people to countries they have absolutely no connection with, presumably to be detained there instead of on EU territory, for an unspecified period and in uncertain conditions. It would move people out of sight without creating conditions for safe and sustainable returns.
While Italy struck a deal with Albania to offshore asylum processing, there is no indication that other countries outside the EU would step up to enter such dubious agreements, nor any guarantees that arrangements of this type will ensure respect for people’s rights or be consistent with the EU rights charter.
The European Commission’s proposal is based on the flawed premise that the EU doesn’t repatriate enough people because migrants are uncooperative, when in reality a principal obstacle is uncooperative countries of origin. Locking people up for years, in the EU or elsewhere, will not resolve that.
The European Parliament should oppose this proposal and the commission’s and member states’ attempt to dilute and subvert EU standards.
Mozambique: Police Fire on Opposition Parade
(Johannesburg) – Mozambique police fired on a peaceful opposition parade on March 5, 2025, injuring at least 16 people, including 2 children, Human Rights Watch said today. Hundreds of people sang, cheered, and danced in the parade, led by the former presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane, in the capital, Maputo, before being attacked.
The parade, involving a convoy of some six vehicles, had moved without incident for about three kilometers amid police units deployed across the city ahead of the signing ceremony for a political agreement that day. The agreement, between President Daniel Chapo and various political parties, but excluding Mondlane, aimed to start a two-year dialogue toward achieving reforms to end the country’s post-electoral crisis.
“The Mozambican police’s use of lethal force against participants in a peaceful parade shows disturbing disregard for life and the law,” said Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities need to promptly and thoroughly investigate this unprovoked attack on the political opposition and hold those responsible to account.”
Since October 2024, Mozambique has experienced an unprecedented wave of demonstrations with people contesting the 2024 election results as well as the rising cost of living and other social problems. Security forces cracking down on the protests have been implicated in serious human rights abuses, including the unlawful killing of over 300 people.
On March 5, 2025, around 1 p.m. near the Hulene Expresso interchange, Mondlane’s convoy approached an armored vehicle of the Police Rapid Intervention Unit stationed in the middle of the road, several witnesses said. Without warning, officers inside and near the police vehicle began to fire tear gas and live bullets at the crowd, forcing them to flee.
A 32-year-old woman shop owner told Human Rights Watch that “things changed from a lively party to war zone within seconds.” A 26-year-old man who was in the front of the crowd said: “We were all singing and dancing when suddenly I heard gunshots. I turned to see what had happened and I saw this police officer from the top of the armored vehicle, holding an AK-47 [assault rifle] pointed at us. I ran for my life.” A Human Rights Watch researcher who visited the scene hours after the incident said that there were used tear gas canisters and bullet shells at the site.
Bullets and tear gas canisters caused the most serious injuries, the local group Plataforma Decide said. Many others inhaled tear gas.
A police spokesman, Leonel Muchina, told Human Rights Watch that police used tear gas to disperse Mondlane’s supporters because “they were causing disruption to traffic” and intended to disrupt the signing of the political agreement. Yet, the signing ceremony was not scheduled to begin until 3 p.m. at the Joaquim Chissano Conference Center, about six kilometers away from the incident. Muchina did not explain why he believed the convoy planned to reach the conference center. Mondlane’s spokesman, Abdul Nariz, said that the convoy planned to end at the Combatants Square (Praça dos Combatentes), which is about four kilometers from the conference center.
The police spokesman said that he was unaware that live bullets were used to disperse the parade. “We know that several people were injured as they fled in panic,” he said. “We will investigate if any were injured with live bullets.”
On March 9, Mozambique’s new minister of justice, religious and constitutional affairs, Mateus Saize, criticized the police’s frequent use of live ammunition to disperse street protests. He urged security forces to “prioritize less-lethal methods, such as rubber bullets and tear gas,” thus avoiding escalations of violence and loss of life.
The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Guidelines for the Policing of Assemblies by Law Enforcement Officials in Africa severely restrict the use of force, especially the use of lethal weapons and so-called less-lethal weapons, such as tear gas.
These standards provide that security forces should use the minimum necessary force at all times. Nonviolent means, such as demands to vacate an area, should be used before resorting to the use of force and firearms. The UN Human Rights Committee in a general comment stated that “[f]irearms are not an appropriate tool for the policing of assemblies. They must never be used simply to disperse an assembly”.
The 2020 UN Guidance on Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement provides that tear gas should only be employed when necessary to prevent further physical harm and should not be used to disperse nonviolent demonstrations. Tear gas should only be used after a warning is given and participants have been given time to obey the warning and provided with a safe space or route for them to move.
“Mozambican authorities need to do more than urge security forces to use less-lethal methods and instead should engage in and enforce security forces reforms,” Budoo-Scholtz said. “They should also ensure that all those harmed by police brutality get prompt and adequate redress.”
Philippines: Duterte Arrested on ICC Warrant
(Manila) – The arrest of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is a historic step toward justice, Human Rights Watch said today.
On March 11, 2025, Philippine authorities acting on an arrest warrant that the ICC issued and sent to Interpol, arrested Duterte in Manila. The ICC sought Duterte’s arrest on a crimes against humanity charge in relation to alleged extrajudicial killings occurring between 2011 and 2019. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. confirmed that an aircraft carrying Duterte to The Hague left Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport at 11:03 p.m.
“Former President Duterte’s arrest and transfer to The Hague is a long-overdue victory against impunity that could bring victims and their families a step closer to justice,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This momentous event sends a message to human rights abusers everywhere that one day they could be held to account.”
The arrest warrant against Duterte contains allegations about extrajudicial killings during his years as mayor of Davao City, and the brutal nationwide “war on drugs” after he became president in 2016.
According to official police statistics, more than 6,000 Filipinos were killed in the “drug war,” mostly impoverished people in urban areas. Human rights groups in the Philippines contend the number is more than 30,000 people. Many children were among those killed or suffered from the harmful consequences of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.
Officers of the Philippine National Police or their agents raided homes at night without warrants, arresting and then executing suspects, and frequently planting evidence to justify their acts. A very small number of the thousands of cases have been investigated or prosecuted, with only four cases resulting in convictions, all of low-ranking police officers for extrajudicial killings.
The widespread violence prompted the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor to open a preliminary examination into the situation in the Philippines, leading then-President Duterte to withdraw the Philippines from the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, in March 2018. The withdrawal took effect one year later. Under the Rome Statute, the ICC retains jurisdiction over crimes committed prior to withdrawal. Former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced the opening of a formal investigation in 2021.
In recent years, the Philippine government has shifted its position on the ICC investigation. Initially, the Marcos administration, which took office in 2022, challenged the court’s jurisdiction over the alleged offenses. After a political falling out between the Marcos and Duterte camps in 2024, the Marcos administration toned down its rhetoric on the ICC and stated in November that it would work with Interpol, the international criminal police organization, if an arrest warrant were issued.
At a time when the ICC itself is under attack by some governments, most recently by US President Donald Trump’s decision to sanction the court’s prosecutor, the arrest of Duterte and his transfer to The Hague affirms the court’s relevance and underscores its significance in ensuring accountability for grave crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
President Marcos should now take further steps to address continuing human rights violations in the Philippines, including more recent extrajudicial killings and attacks against activists and civil society groups. The Philippine government should also rejoin the ICC, a step that an increasing number of Filipinos support.
“President Marcos has begun to chip away at the longstanding impunity for drug-related killings in the Philippines,” Lau said. “He should follow through by rescinding Duterte’s orders that unleashed the ‘war on drugs,’ and prioritize comprehensive reforms of the Philippines police.”
DR Congo: Rwanda-Backed M23 Target Journalists, Activists
(Nairobi) – The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group and the allied Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) have threatened, detained, and attacked journalists, critics, and civil society activists since capturing Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in late January 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. The Alliance Fleuve Congo is a politico-military coalition that includes the M23.
In North and South Kivu provinces, M23 fighters have raided homes, made death threats, and threatened reprisals, undermining independent media and the work of civil society groups. M23 fighters have also detained civil society leaders and committed summary executions, including killing a singer and activist at his home and five men doing forced labor.
“The Rwanda-backed M23 is harassing and attacking activists, journalists, and peaceful critics in areas the armed group controls in eastern Congo,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, senior Great Lakes researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Restoring a measure of normalcy to the captured cities of Goma and Bukavu will mean allowing journalists and civil society activists to do their jobs without threats, violence, or worse.”
Since late January, Human Rights Watch has interviewed over two dozen Congolese activists as well as domestic and foreign journalists in the cities of Goma, Kinshasa, and Bujumbura, and reviewed audio recordings of phone calls, screenshots of messages, and video and audio recordings of speeches given by AFC and M23 officials. Human Rights Watch received credible information that over 200 activists have sought protection support since the M23 began its offensive on Goma in January and later captured South Kivu’s provincial capital, Bukavu, in February.
The M23 and AFC authorities as well as the Rwandan government are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law in areas they occupy. They should permit civil society activists and journalists to work and move freely except for imperative reasons of security, and hold to account their personnel responsible for abuses.
On March 5, Human Rights Watch emailed its preliminary findings to Rwandan authorities and asked for comment, but has received no replies at time of publication.
After the M23 and Rwandan forces captured Goma on January 27, the AFC replaced the police and other national government institutions across the city. Since then, M23 fighters have beaten and summarily executed alleged supporters of the Congolese armed forces and its allies, as well as alleged criminals, and looted homes.
A Goma resident said that a group of M23 fighters came to his home on January 29 and accused him of helping their enemies kill their “friends” on the front line. “They beat me with sticks on my back all day,” he said. “I can’t walk anymore. They beat me, attacked me, and looted my house.”
On February 13, M23 fighters fatally shot the singer and activist Delphin Katembo Vinywasiki, known as Delcat Idengo, at his home in an apparently noncombat situation. On February 20, the AFC spokesperson, Lawrence Kanyuka, accused Idengo of being a member of the youth movement Lutte pour le Changement (Struggle for Change, or LUCHA) and told Human Rights Watch that the fighters killed him for wearing “military insignia.” In a separate incident, an independent source said M23 fighters summarily executed a LUCHA activist along with four other men after they carried out forced labor for the armed group.
The M23 has long used threats and intimidation to restrict the population’s access to information and to control criticism. Journalists have already faced difficulties reporting on the situation in Goma.
The Rwandan government has arrested Congolese civilians without evident legal basis. In February, after Rwandan authorities arrested a Congolese activist who had crossed into Rwanda, they handed him over to the M23 military intelligence in Goma, which detained him for seven days. Kanyuka confirmed that the activist was arrested in Rwanda at the M23’s request and held in military intelligence facilities for “being against our regime” and had “produced a lot of criticism against us.” AFC and M23 officials have detained and threatened several Congolese activists.
The Congolese armed forces and its allied armed groups have also been responsible for serious abuses. Amid the fighting in eastern Congo during 2024, several armed groups aligned with the Congolese army increased attacks on human rights defenders. Journalists reported that both the M23 and Congolese national authorities pressured them to publish only positive stories on their military engagements.
The Congolese government also has threatened action against journalists who cover the country’s conflict. On January 7, the president of the Communication and Broadcasting Board (Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel et de la communication, CSAC) announced that Radio France Internationale, France 24, and TV5Monde’s Africa program faced suspension for reporting on “alleged advances of terrorists.” Justice Minister Constant Mutamba warned that anyone, including journalists, who shares information about the M23 and Rwandan forces would face severe legal consequences, including possibly the death penalty.
The parties to the armed conflict in eastern Congo, including Rwanda and the M23, and Congo and its allied armed groups, are bound by international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. Relevant law can be found in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including Common Article 3, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and customary international law. The law of occupation concerning the protection of civilians applies to areas, including Goma and Bukavu, that Rwandan or M23 forces control. While occupation law permits occupying forces to impose security restrictions on civilians, it also requires them over time to restore and ensure public order and civil life for the occupied population.
The European Union, its member states, and other concerned governments should urgently adopt further targeted sanctions against the M23 and high-level Rwandan and Congolese officials responsible for serious abuses.
On February 20, the United States imposed financial and property sanctions on Gen. James Kabarebe, Rwanda’s minister of state and former military commander, and on Kanyuka, the AFC spokesperson. Governments should also press Rwanda to ensure that civilians, including journalists and activists, have freedom of movement in M23-controlled territory, in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The EU should also suspend its deal on minerals with Rwanda in light of its forces’ involvement in abuses with the M23, and review military and security cooperation with Rwanda, including under the European Peace Facility.
“During this difficult time in M23-controlled cities, the local population needs access to essential information and reliable news,” de Montjoye said. “Governments should press Rwanda to ensure that the M23 will allow journalists and activists to function without unnecessary restrictions that are putting civilians at greater risk.”
For additional detail, please see below.
Activists, Journalists under Threat in Goma
The M23’s military offensive in 2024 led to the closure of numerous local radio stations as a result of direct attacks, looting, M23 takeovers, and journalists fleeing the fighting. Reporters Without Borders reported that more than 25 radio stations in North Kivu province ceased operations due to fighting and looting.
Since early February, new AFC administrative authorities have made statements threatening civil society, saying it is “cleaning up” Goma. Such statements have heightened journalists and activists’ fears of being targeted.
Days after taking the city, M23 fighters began harassing journalists, activists, and civil society leaders whom they deemed a threat. On January 27, Col. Erasto Bahati Musanga, an M23 commander who has since been appointed governor of Goma, phoned an activist in the city to tell him they were looking for him because they had been tracking his human rights work on M23 abuses. “After that I didn’t spend two nights in the same place,” the activist said. Another activist told Human Rights Watch that Musanga had similarly threatened him.
Local media reported that on February 10, Ephraïm Kabasha, the administrator of Nyiragongo territory, just north of Goma, said during a meeting with local chiefs that “civil society and the Youth Territorial Council [Conseil Territorial de la Jeunesse, CTJ] are the main troublemakers and instigators of conflict in the territory of Nyiragongo. We have therefore decided to remove them under our governance.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed screenshots of messages that Kabasha sent threatening an activist prior to the capture of Goma. After the M23’s takeover, Kabasha phoned at least one other activist. “He threatened me badly and said, ‘I know where you are, you can’t escape,’” the activist said. “Since then, I’m in hiding. I don’t know how we can leave Goma. Some unknown men also visited my family’s house.”
In early March, M23 fighters in North Kivu separately detained two civil society leaders, according to credible information. Both men had received threats from the M23 because of their work on the conflict. Kabasha allegedly detained Jacques Niyonzima, a civil society leader from Rutshuru, after he arrived at the administrative office of Nyiragongo territory. On March 4, Kabasha took him to a military detention site. He was released later that day after being questioned about his work on M23 abuses. He was severely beaten and was told others would also be arrested.
Kabasha replied to Human Rights Watch’s request for a response to the allegations against him by saying that Human Rights Watch was not the judicial police and to stop asking him questions.
On March 3, David Muisha, a civil society leader in Masisi, was detained in Goma and transferred to a police post, according to sources. He was released on March 6 after being beaten and threatened in detention. On March 4, the M23 in Goma took into custody Didace Jimmy Butsitsi Nchimiyimana, an activist working for an organization documenting crimes related to the M23 and the Rwandan military offensive in eastern Congo. Sources said that he is being held by the M23 in Goma in military detention.
On February 2, the AFC member Jean-Louis Kulu Musubao, now the mayor of Kirumba commune, gave a speech at the CBCA Virunga Church and said that the M23 “no longer wants civil society, citizen movements, and pressure groups, such as the youth movement, LUCHA. If you end up in those, you’ll have problems with us.”
When asked about these private and public threats, Kanyuka, the AFC spokesperson, told Human Rights Watch: “There are scores to be settled with people who are against our struggle, that’s quite normal.… There are small conflicts with civil society working with the central government … [but] citizen movements are different from civil society.” Kanyuka also said that local neighborhood leaders and “focal points” in Goma and Bukavu were being taken to Bunagana, where the M23 has a base, and given “ideological training.”
Over a dozen activists and journalists told Human Rights Watch that M23 fighters threatened them and that they were concerned for their security. “All the activists who came from Rutshuru [a territory in North Kivu] are in greater danger because they are known to many of these M23 elements, especially those who are still in Goma,” said an activist who is now in Kinshasa. “The threats date back to when the activists fled Rutshuru, and now that the M23 is in Goma, they are asking all the activists there to join the movement and to hand over copies of all the reports they have made against the M23.”Another activist from Rutshuru provided screenshots and audio recordings of threats he received from an M23 commander and some fighters while he was in Goma, prompting him to flee before the city was captured.
Several activists and journalists said that M23 fighters and commanders had gone to their houses since the M23 took control of Goma. One activist said men he believed to be M23 visited his house on two occasions. He said an M23 commander also phoned him and accused him of working for Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi: “He said … if I turn myself in, nothing will happen to me except for a few days in prison to make me agree to be one of them, but that if I refuse and the M23 catches me, I may die.” A journalist in hiding said that four M23 fighters in a jeep came to his house in early February.
Two journalists who had reported from M23-controlled Bweremana, Jonas Kasula from Labeur Info and Jonathan Mupenda from Molière TV, said they had received anonymous threatening messages. A message received on January 9 said: “You were in Bweremana on December 31 and we had the opportunity to kill you. You should know that we are watching your every move. When we get to Goma, we will finish you off.”
On February 18, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern for the safety of lawyers and other judicial staff, particularly those who were prosecuting individuals for serious crimes who have since escaped from prisons in Goma and Bukavu. On February 17, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders expressed “extreme concern” about the situation of human rights defenders in eastern Congo.
On March 5, the Special Rapporteur said she had “received credible reports of human rights defenders being detained incommunicado, forcibly disappeared and tortured in Rutshuru and Masisi in North Kivu, while at least six human rights defenders are reported missing following their attempt to flee Goma after the city was taken by M23.”
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions requires the authorities to treat civilians humanely at all times and prohibits violence to their life and person, murder, and outrages against personal dignity. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which addresses the legal obligations of occupying forces, permits the detention of civilians only for “imperative reasons of security.” To prevent arbitrary deprivation of liberty, the authorities are obligated to inform the person arrested of the reasons for it; bring the person arrested for a criminal offense promptly before an independent authority; and provide the person with an opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of the detention.
Ensuring the Safety of Activists, Journalists
During the recent fighting, thousands of Congolese civilians sought to reach safer areas, either within Congo or across the border to Rwanda or Burundi. Rwanda has not blocked most civilians trying to enter the country. Since the M23 and Rwandan forces’ capture of Goma on January 27 and the closure of Goma’s airport, and their capture of Bukavu on February 16, there are no safe pathways to travel from Goma to other parts of Congo.
Activists concerned about their security in M23-controlled areas have been among those trying to leave Goma and Bukavu. Thomas D’Aquin Muiti Luanda, an activist and known critic of the Rwandan government, and Clovis Munihire, the North Kivu coordinator of a Congolese government-led disarmament program with whom Luanda has worked, were detained in Gisenyi, Rwanda, on February 4 after crossing the border, a credible source told Human Rights Watch. The authorities detained them for several hours, then transferred them to M23 custody. They were released on February 11 without being given the reasons for their arrest or an opportunity to contest their detention.
When asked about their detention, Kanyuka, the AFC spokesperson, said: “When we were in Rutshuru, Masisi, Kirumba, Kanyabayonga ... they were against our regime. They produced a lot of criticism against us. Now we are the only rooster crowing, we don’t have a choice.” He said that M23 military intelligence handled their case.
Another activist attempting to flee to Burundi through Rwanda was taken into custody on February 12 at the Congo border by Rwandan officials, who accused him of traveling with false travel documents, several sources said. The activist is a member of an organization that documents abuses committed by Rwandan forces and the M23. They said that the activist’s travel documents were authentic and expressed concern that he was being targeted because of his work.
Several Congolese activists who fled to Bujumbura, Burundi’s largest city, told Human Rights Watch they were concerned about the risk of forcible return. Since the M23’s capture of Bukavu, over 60,000 people were reported to have fled into Burundi. Human Rights Watch learned on February 15 that Burundian authorities had detained several activists among Congolese men and boys and threatened to send them back to Congo.
Rwanda and Burundi, as parties to both the UN and African refugee conventions, are prohibited from expelling or returning refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened, including because of their political opinions. The governments have the responsibility, in collaboration with the United Nations Refugee Agency, to provide effective physical protection to asylum seekers and refugees within their territories.
Summary Killings by the M23
Click to expand Image Pierre Katema Byamungu © PrivateThe M23 has a long history of grave human rights and humanitarian law abuses in areas that they control, including summary executions of civilians and captured combatants. Since taking control of Goma in late January, domestic civil society organizations, the media, and the UN have reported killings by the M23. The apparent summary executions of two known critics of the M23 have heightened concerns among activists and journalists that those deemed critical of M23 and AFC authorities may be targeted.
Pierre Katema Byamungu
On February 12 in Kalehe territory, South Kivu province, the M23 forced Pierre Katema Byamungu, a member of the activist movement LUCHA, and seven other men, including members of a local youth council, to carry out unpaid labor, an independent source told Human Rights Watch.
After transporting wounded and dead M23 fighters from the village of Muhongoza, they were taken to the village of Buziralo. The M23 accused Byamungu and the others of being members of the Wazalendo, a coalition of armed groups allied to the Congolese army. The source said that the M23 fighters then executed Byamungu and four others.
The AFC spokesperson, Kanyuka, told Human Rights Watch on February 20 that the M23 was not responsible for the killings.
Delphin Katembo Vinywasiki (Delcat Idengo)
On February 13, in Goma, M23 fighters shot and killed Delphin Katembo Vinywasiki, a singer and activist known as Delcat Idengo.
Click to expand Image Delphin Katembo Vinywasiki (Delcat Idengo). © Democratic Republic of Congo's Ministry of Culture, Arts and HeritageAudio and video witness accounts that Human Rights Watch reviewed indicate that when jeeps arrived at Idengo’s house, Idengo tried to flee, and armed men shot him. Videos and photographs of the aftermath show multiple wounds to Idengo’s head, arms, and right hand. Independent forensic experts concluded that Idengo appears to have been covering his head with his arms when he was shot.
Kanyuka confirmed that M23 fighters killed Idengo and accused him of being a member of LUCHA. “We had forbidden the population from wearing military insignia,” Kanyuka said. “We found him at his house wearing military insignia during a sweep.”
The information about the clothes that Idengo was wearing when he was killed is contradictory. The media reported that Idengo was filming a music video when he was shot. Some photographs taken after the killing and circulated on social media show him in military-style camouflage pants; others show him wearing white pants with an embroidered Congolese flag. This suggests that someone changed Idengo’s pants after he was killed. No weapons are visible in the photographs.
A LUCHA member said Idengo was active in the movement between 2018 and 2020 in Beni. In 2021, Idengo was prosecuted, but eventually acquitted, for insulting President Tshisekedi and spreading “false rumors” in songs that accused Tshisekedi of not fulfilling his promises. Idengo also released songs criticizing the M23 and other armed groups. He was awaiting trial after being jailed in 2024 for allegedly inciting an armed uprising to force UN peacekeepers to leave the country. He had escaped from Goma’s prison during the M23 offensive on the town, according to media reports. On February 12, the day before he was killed, he released a song criticizing the “Tutsi occupation,” and the M23.
Media Restrictions in Eastern Congo
Restrictions Imposed by Rwanda and the M23
Under international humanitarian law, journalists reporting in areas of armed conflict must be protected and respected. However, occupying powers can take measures to ensure the security of their forces so long as they are proportionate and lawful.
Several journalists said that Kanyuka, the AFC spokesperson, required foreign journalists to show Rwandan press accreditation to be allowed to cross the border into Goma. With Goma’s airport closed, everyone traveling to Goma needs to go through Rwanda. Kanyuka told Human Rights Watch that journalists could travel to M23-held areas with Rwandan or Ugandan press accreditation.
Witnesses said they saw senior Rwandan officials, including from the Rwandan Office of the Government Spokesperson, and Vincent Karega, Rwanda’s Great Lakes ambassador-at-large, in Gisenyi, Rwanda, arranging transfers for journalists to Goma. Rwanda’s decision to process press accreditations to M23-controlled areas is indicative of the country’s proximity with the armed group.
Sources said that Kanyuka requested that some journalists fill out a detailed form, reviewed by Human Rights Watch, providing information, including on the topic and nature of their reporting and the locations where they wished to work. Kanyuka told Human Rights Watch that payments for accreditation did not exceed US$500. However, sources said Kanyuka had required payments for accreditation ranging from $600 to $1,000, which Kanyuka confirmed.
Congolese Government Restrictions on Media, Freedom of Expression
The Congolese government has often restricted the media and the right to freedom of expression in eastern Congo for apparent politically motivated reasons.
During the M23 offensive on Goma in late January 2025, Congolese authorities shut down the Internet, and in February, they blocked access to social media such as TikTok and X.
Long before the recent fighting, Congolese authorities targeted perceived critics of the government, carrying out politically motivated arrests, detentions, and prosecutions. In May 2021, the government imposed martial law in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which facilitated restrictions on independent reporting of the conflict, including restrictions imposed by the government’s media regulator.
In February 2024, the media regulator, the Communication and Broadcasting Board (Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel et de la communication, CSAC), issued a directive informing the media not to broadcast debates on Congolese army operations without the presence of at least one “expert on the matter.” It also told journalists to avoid radio phone-ins discussing the conflict and interviewing “negative forces.”
In April, the media regulator said that media outlets should no longer “broadcast information relating to the rebellion in eastern DRC without referring to official [government] sources.”
In July, the CSAC suspended the journalist Jessy Kabasele following a radio interview with Koffi Olomide, a singer, in which Olomide criticized the army’s response to the M23. The media regulator said that Kabasele had inadequately reframed Olomide’s statement, which “undermines the enormous efforts and sacrifices made by the government.”
In July, unidentified men abducted the activist Fortifi Lushima after he criticized the government’s response to the conflict on television. He was released several days later.
New US Labor Secretary, Congress Should Act on Child Labor
President Trump’s pick to lead the United States Department of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, will soon oversee the federal government’s response to labor rights issues across the US. One of her key priorities should be taking action to end hazardous child labor.
In recent years, investigative reports from around the US showed children working harrowing overnight shifts in slaughterhouses and using wildly dangerous machinery in auto body plants. These were not isolated incidents. In October 2024, the Department of Labor reported that child labor violations had increased by 88 percent since 2019.
My colleagues and I have researched hazardous child labor on US farms and interviewed children working exhausting 12-hour shifts in the heat, exposed to toxic pesticides and other dangers. While hiring children to perform hazardous work at meatpacking plants and on factory floors is illegal, most of the dangerous child labor we saw on farms still is not.
Under US labor law, children of any age can work on small farms. At 12, children can work on any-sized farms with parental permission as long as they do not miss school. At 16, children can do jobs considered hazardous on farms, when in every other sector, you must be 18 to do hazardous work.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Labor stepped up child labor enforcement, which takes time and resources. With the Trump administration slashing federal personnel and budgets, these efforts could be hampered. Besides, enforcement does little to help when the laws are too weak to protect children from danger.
The Trump administration’s cruel immigration agenda will further marginalize children involved in hazardous child labor. Most child farmworkers we interviewed were the children of immigrants. Other investigations found unaccompanied migrant youth at risk. Immigration raids fuel a climate of fear that enables workplace exploitation and makes reporting abuse risky, frightening, and highly unlikely, especially for a child.
The US Congress has an important role in the fight to end child labor. In good news this week, Senators Cory Booker and Josh Hawley reintroduced bipartisan legislation aiming to hold companies with federal contracts accountable for child labor in their operations. Congress should pass this bill and strengthen legal protections for children involved in child labor.
Children’s health, lives, and futures are at stake.
Activist and Whistleblower Killed in South Africa
On March 7, Pamela Mabini, a community activist and whistleblower was shot and killed outside her home in Kwazakhele, Gqeberha, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Through her nonprofit organization, Maro Foundation, Mabini was known for her activism and charitable work aimed at restoring dignity and reducing crime and violence in her community.
Mabini’s whistleblowing played an instrumental role in the arrest of televangelist Timothy Omotoso and others, who are on trial for rape, racketeering, and human trafficking. Before her murder, she was a regular attendee at the trial, participating in protests and providing support to victims and witnesses.
Mabini’s killing has once again raised concerns about whistleblowers’ safety in South Africa, as many face retaliation, loss of livelihood, and even loss of life. It has also highlighted the woeful limitations and inadequacy of the existing legal framework and the dire need to strengthen regulatory bodies, such as the Public Protector and Human Rights Commission.
The plight of whistleblowers such as Athol Williams, Babita Deokaran, Jimmy Mohlala, Martha Ngoye, Cynthia Stimpel, and many others point to the personal cost of whistleblowing in South Africa and the lack of legal, security, financial, and psychological assistance they received as they exposed corruption in government and state-owned enterprises.
Following the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development’s publication of a discussion document on proposed reforms for the whistleblower protection regime in South Africa in 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation address on February 6, 2025, made a commitment to “finalize the Whistleblower Protection Framework and introduce the Whistleblower Protections Bill in Parliament during this financial year.”
The South African government should intensify efforts to introduce the Whistleblower Protections Bill and provide comprehensive safeguards for whistleblowers and effective witness protection. The government’s expressed commitment needs to be urgently translated into concrete actions because whistleblowers’ rights to life, security, privacy, and freedom of expression are routinely infringed upon.
South African whistleblowers cannot afford to wait any longer for the comprehensive changes required to end the risk of punishment, retaliation, harassment, and violence they face on a daily basis.
Myanmar Junta’s Farcical Plans for Elections
On Saturday, Myanmar’s junta leader, Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, announced during a visit to Belarus that the country would hold national elections by January 2026.
If the proposed timeframe holds, Myanmar’s citizens would head to the polls under a junta that has been committing numerous atrocities since the military took power in a February 2021 coup. Widespread repression, including the arbitrary detention of opposition politicians and the dissolution and criminalization of their political parties, has created a climate of fear that makes free and fair elections impossible. Military abuses are rampant in areas contested by ethnic armed groups and anti-junta forces.
Myanmar’s generals do not control enough of the country to hold credible elections. Last October, the military conducted a nationwide census, allegedly to compile voter lists, which instead appeared to be a counterinsurgency tool designed to root out opposition activists and conscript military recruits. Junta officials later announced they had managed to successfully conduct the census in only 145 out of 330 townships – less than half of the country.
Nevertheless, a few governments can be expected to support the elections. According to junta-controlled media, Min Aung Hlaing has sought China’s backing, raising the plan with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in August and again with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in November. Min Aung Hlaing has also invited election observers from Belarus, which recently held its own bogus polls that ensured a seventh consecutive term for President Aliaksandr Lukashenka.
Countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are divided on whether to support the elections. Cambodia’s former prime minister and current Senate President Hun Sen has offered to send members of the country’s National Election Committee to help prepare for Myanmar’s polls. Cambodia has a history of elections rendered meaningless by irregularities, dissolution of political parties, and physical attacks on the political opposition.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan recently told reporters, “We told them [Myanmar’s junta] that election is not a priority at the moment.”
United Nations human rights experts were more blunt: “We urge UN Member States to call this exercise what it is, a fraud.”
Concerned governments in Asia, including ASEAN member states, Japan, South Korea, and India, should also take this advice and firmly oppose sham elections that will only serve to legitimize military control.
Thailand: Insurgents Bomb District Office in Deep South
(Bangkok) – Separatist insurgents in Thailand’s deep south carried out a deadly attack on a government office in Su Ngai Kolok district in Narathiwat province, Human Rights Watch said today. The deliberate attack on civilians was an apparent war crime under international humanitarian law.
Credible sources told Human Rights Watch that security camera footage shows that on March 9, 2025, at 7:10 p.m., 10 heavily armed insurgents stormed the compound of Su Ngai Kolok district office while on-duty defense volunteers, who are affiliated with the Interior Ministry, were breaking their Ramadan fast. The insurgents opened fire with assault rifles, threw grenades, and detonated a large car bomb. Two defense volunteers were killed, and eight others were injured. Three passersby were also wounded near the compound.
“Separatist insurgents in Thailand’s deep south have again used deadly violence to terrorize civilians and destroy government property,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The insurgents need to recognize that these are war crimes and cannot be justified.”
Shortly after the attack on the district office, two additional bombs exploded, one near railway tracks and another outside the Big C shopping mall in Su Ngai Kolok district. There were no reports of casualties. In the neighboring Pattani province, there was another bomb attack in Sai Buri district. One soldier was killed and two civilians were wounded.
Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) insurgents have often unlawfully targeted ethnic Malay Muslims they accuse of being munafiq (religious hypocrites) for working with Thai authorities. Many ethnic Malay Muslim defense volunteers received letters from the BRN threatening them with death if they did not quit their jobs. Similar death threats have also been found in banners and graffiti displayed in public areas.
International humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, is applicable in Thailand’s southern border provinces, and protects civilians and civilian structures from attack. Government officials and agencies not participating in military operations are civilian, and not subject to attack. All those responsible for planning, ordering, or carrying out attacks targeting civilians should be appropriately prosecuted for war crimes.
Since the armed insurgency began in January 2004, BRN insurgents have carried out thousands of attacks in violation of the laws of war, which Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned.
BRN insurgents seek to liberate Patani Darussalam (Islamic Land of Patani) from what they contend is a Thai Buddhist occupation. They have made legally unjustified claims that attacks on civilian officials such as teachers are permitted because they are part of the Thai state or because the BRN’s interpretation of Islam permits such attacks.
Violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Thai government security forces also remains a grave concern, Human Rights Watch said.
Thai government security forces and militias have committed numerous violations against ethnic Malay Muslim civilians and suspected BRN members, including torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances.
An entrenched culture of impunity for human rights violations by government officials has exacerbated the situation in the southern border provinces, Human Rights Watch said. Under the laws of war, abuses by one party never justify abuses by the other.
Thai authorities recently failed to prosecute 14 former military personnel and government officials indicted on charges related to the violent dispersal of ethnic Malay Muslim protesters in Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province in October 2004, and the subsequent death in military custody of 85 people and injuries to several hundred. The 20-year statute of limitations ended in October 2024, preventing further legal action.
“BRN should cease its deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and the Thai government should fully and fairly prosecute abusive officials,” Pearson said. “The people in Thailand’s deep south need to escape the violence that has marked the region for more than 20 years.”
Syria: End Coastal Killing Spree, Protect Civilians
(New York) – Summary executions and other atrocities have taken place in Syria’s coastal region following insurgent attacks on Syrian security forces and during subsequent government security operations, with the Alawite community bearing the brunt of the violence, Human Rights Watch said today. While interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa acknowledged that “many parties entered the Syrian coast and many violations occurred,” he declined to comment on the involvement of foreign fighters, allied factions, or his own security forces. The full extent and perpetrators of these crimes have not yet been conclusively determined.
The recent wave of abuse began after coordinated attacks on March 6 by armed men apparently linked with the former government of Bashar al-Assad. These attacks resulted in the deaths of 231 members of the security forces as of March 9, according to the new government’s Military Operations Command via its official Telegram channel. In response, government security forces, including factions under the Ministry of Defense, conducted what the government called “combing operations” throughout the region. Unidentified armed groups and individuals—many entering Tartus and Latakia governorates from other parts of Syria following official calls for general mobilization—joined these operations. Unverified videos posted to Telegram channels show perpetrators, many in military fatigues, committing extrajudicial executions, looting, and indiscriminately shooting into homes and villages, as well as widespread mistreatment and outrages on personal dignity, including sectarian rhetoric.
“Syria’s new leaders promised to break with the horrors of the past, but grave abuses on a staggering scale are being reported against predominantly Alawite Syrians in the coastal region and elsewhere in Syria,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Government action to protect civilians and prosecute perpetrators of indiscriminate shootings, summary executions, and other grave crimes must be swift and unequivocal.”
Human Rights Watch was not able to verify the number of civilians killed or displaced, but obituaries circulating on Facebook indicate hundreds were killed, including entire families. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported on March 9 that general security forces and affiliated armed factions and individuals were responsible for the deaths of at least 396 people, “both civilians and disarmed members of the remnants of the Assad regime.” Some estimates put the civilian death toll at over 700. The SNHR also reported civilian deaths at the hands of armed groups affiliated with the former government.
Initially, official Telegram channels urged people to head to the coast to “support our brothers.” However, this rhetoric quickly changed, with officials later emphasizing that volunteers were no longer needed. On March 6, Latakia’s public security director announced a full security mobilization, while the defense minister ordered military deployment to crush Assad loyalists. By March 7, President al-Sharaa declared that the time for forgiveness had passed, focusing on “liberation” and “purification” of the region while urging security forces to protect civilians. The Military Operations Command reported that about half a million fighters had mobilized to defeat the “Nusayri [a derogatory word for Alawites] rebellion.” It later claimed “individual violations” took place at the hands of “unorganized crowds.”
On March 9, President al-Sharaa announced the formation of an independent national committee to investigate the events of March 6 within 30 days and pledged to refer those responsible for crimes to the judiciary. Syrian authorities should ensure that the commission is able to carry out its work independently and impartially.
Many families in the coastal region have fled because of the security raids, taking shelter in remote mountain villages, the Russian Hmeimim airbase near Latakia city, and across the border in Lebanon.
Human Rights Watch spoke to a 22-year-old Alawite medical student who fled Baniyas city on foot with his family after learning that four of his relatives had been killed. They found shelter in a house on the edge of a village.
“We’re hungry and cold but there’s no way we’ll go back to the city,” he said. “We don’t feel safe there. Here too, there is no rest, every time we hear a sound we run into the wilderness and hide.” He said he contacted the Syrian Red Crescent and the White Helmets for evacuation, but they told him they lacked the capacity. “They told us to call the authorities but there’s no way we can trust them. Our top priority right now is survival and if we survive this then we want to seek refuge outside this country.”
Human Rights Watch reviewed and geolocated videos and images of one incident of mass executions in the village of al-Mukhtariya in the Latakia countryside, counting at least 32 men’s bodies.
Syrian activists in the coastal region told Human Rights Watch that Alawites and others in the region have lived in fear because of abuses during security combing operations since December, as well as widespread loss of livelihoods due to arbitrary dismissals from jobs and the dissolution of the former army and security forces.
Since December, there have been numerous incidents of incitement against predominantly Alawite and Shia communities, including intentional vandalizing and destruction of Alawi religious shrines and mass distribution of anti-Alawite flyers. Violations in the context of combing operations, including summary killings, have been reported since at least early January, including in Alawite-majority villages in the western Homs countryside.
On January 23, security forces conducted a combing operation in Fahel village, during which they arrested at least 58 men, including former military personnel who had had formally resolved their legal status with the new authorities. After the operation concluded, residents say, they discovered bodies on the outskirts of town.
It was later confirmed that 13 former military personnel, some of whom were detained earlier during the operation, and two civilians were killed that day. The Homs media office said in a statement to The National that authorities tracked down and arrested attackers, but no further information has been made public about accountability efforts.
The Syrian government should immediately ensure that civilians who want to flee are able to do so through secure routes and that humanitarian organizations can provide assistance to those sheltering in remote villages, including food, medical aid, and secure relocation options, Human Rights Watch said.
The violence in Syria’s coastal region underscores the urgent need for justice and accountability. Accountability for atrocities must include all parties, including groups like Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham and the Türkiye-backed Syrian National Army, which now constitute Syria’s new security forces. These groups have a well-documented history of human rights abuses and violations of international law. Justice efforts need to address past and ongoing violations, ensuring accountability for abusers and providing reparations to victims.
Syria’s new leadership should also fully cooperate with and ensure unhindered access to independent monitors including the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
At the same time, comprehensive security sector reform of Syria’s new army and security forces is critical. This includes creating a security sector aligned with international human rights standards, ensuring civilian oversight, and implementing rigorous vetting to remove individuals involved in abuses. Other countries should provide technical and financial assistance to ensure that the new security forces protect civilians and observe the rule of law. This should also include supporting an independent judiciary that can ensure the legality of detention and lawful treatment of all detainees.
“Justice is not real justice if it only applies to some but not others,” Coogle said. “Accountability needs to extend to all human rights abusers, regardless of their past or current affiliations. Without this, lasting peace and stability in Syria will remain elusive.”
Bulgaria: Saudi Activist at Risk of Deportation
(Beirut) – Bulgarian authorities should suspend any plans to deport Saudi human rights defender Abdulrahman al-Khalidi to Saudi Arabia, and should allow his resettlement to a third country, twenty organizations said today. Bulgarian authorities would violate the Bulgarian, European, and international law obligation of nonrefoulement, which bars returning someone to a country where they would risk facing torture or ill-treatment if they deport this highly visible critic of the Saudi government.
Bulgaria’s National Security Agency issued an expulsion order against al-Khalidi in February 2024. On October 21, 2024, the Sofia Administrative Court ruling confirmed the expulsion order, imposing compulsory expulsion to Saudi Arabia, according to Al-Khalidi’s lawyer. Al-Khalidi has a separate pending asylum case and his lawyer in Bulgaria told Human Rights Watch that his expulsion order cannot be executed unless his asylum appeals are exhausted and denied.
“Bulgaria will violate its nonrefoulement obligations and become complicit in Saudi repression if they deport Abdulrahman al-Khalidi to Saudi Arabia before the outcome of his asylum case,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Bulgarian and European Union authorities should prevent a patent violation of international and EU law and halt the deportation of al-Khalidi and immediately allow his resettlement to a third country.”
Human rights organizations have documented Saudi authorities targeting of human rights defenders and activists for their peaceful expression, punishing them with decades-long sentences and rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system.
Al-Khalidi has been a human rights defender for more than a decade, advocating the rights of prisoners and participating in multiple demonstrations supporting Saudi detainees.
He fled Saudi Arabia in 2013, fearing for his safety. Al-Khalidi continued his activism abroad by writing articles criticizing the Saudi government and taking part in the prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s online movement Bees Army, which seeks to counter pro-Saudi government propaganda and trolls online. He lived in exile for nearly a decade in Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, but after the murder of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, al-Khalidi crossed to Bulgaria on foot to claim asylum.
In May 2022, Bulgaria’s State Agency for Refugees rejected al-Khalidi’s asylum application because it did not accept he was at risk of persecution in Saudi Arabia, claiming that Saudi Arabia had “taken measures to democratize society.” Al-Khalidi appealed this decision to the Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria twice and is awaiting a decision on the appeal, al-Khalidi’s lawyer in Bulgaria told Human Rights Watch. The decision can be appealed further to the appellate and supreme courts.
Rights organizations have documented poor living and hygiene conditions, beatings by officers, and other ill-treatment during his detention at Sofia Busmantsi Detention Centre. In April 2024, Human Rights Watch documented allegations of abuse by police officers in Bulgaria’s Busmanci Migrant Accommodation Center against al-Khalidi. Al-Khalidi was denied medical care after, an informed source told Human Rights Watch. Bulgarian authorities should investigate the alleged assaults and abuse and hold those responsible to account.
Bulgaria is under an obligation to refrain from returning individuals to another state where “there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,” under article 3 of the International Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This protection also applies under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and under customary international law.
Al-Khalidi’s deportation could also violate article 33 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees that prohibits “return of a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers or territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
“Bulgaria’s potential violation of European and international law is deeply concerning, especially when it could expose al-Khalidi to torture and other serious abuses in Saudi Arabia,” Abdullah Alaoudh, countering authoritarianism senior director from Middle East Democracy Center. “Bulgaria’s State Agency for Refugees was wrong to conclude the ‘measures’ Saudi Arabia had taken ‘to democratize society’ were sufficient to disqualify al-Khalidi’s asylum claim, given the state’s continuing record of persecuting political dissidents like him.”
Signatories:
ALQST for Human RightsBayerischer Flüchtlingsrat - Bavarian Refugee CouncilCenter for Legal Aid - Voice in BulgariaCollettivo Rotte BalcanicheEuropean Saudi Organization for Human RightsFeminist mobilisations (Bulgaria)Front Line DefendersGulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)Human Rights WatchHuMENA for Human Rights and Civic EngagementInternational Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights DefendersLaw and Democracy Support Foundation - LDSFMedical Volunteers International (BG: Medical Solidarity International)MENA Rights GroupMiddle East Democracy Center (MEDC)Migrant Solidarity BulgariaMunich Refugee Council - Münchner FlüchtlingsratNo Name KitchenScalabrinian Agency for Development Cooperation (ASCS)World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights DefendersBahrain: Authorities Violate Detained Children’s Rights
(Beirut) – Bahraini authorities abuse and threaten children detained in connection with protests and other forms of political expression, Human Rights Watch and Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) said today. In separate investigations, the rights groups found that although Bahraini authorities released many children from detention in 2024, they have continued to arrest and detain children and violate their rights.
Bahraini authorities should take urgent steps to end the abuse of children in detention, and should only detain children as a last resort in exceptional cases. They should also compensate or provide other appropriate remedies for people who have suffered abuse in detention, including children deprived of their rights during critical childhood years, such as limiting their access to education.
“No child or adult who is participating in peaceful protest should be arrested, tortured, and abused,” said Niku Jafarnia, Bahrain and Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Bahraini authorities have stolen many children’s childhoods by detaining and torturing them and denying them access to their families and to school.”
Between November 2023 and September 2024, Human Rights Watch spoke with eight men who had been detained as children between 2013 and 2019 and who were released between 2019 and 2024. Human Rights Watch also interviewed four mothers whose sons were detained after October 2023 either while participating in protests in support of Palestinian rights or because they had been perceived as protesting.
In most of the 12 cases, the children were beaten or threatened with torture, including rape, and most were denied adequate access to lawyers and to their families. Parents of some detainees said that many were not initially charged with anything when they were arrested, and that officials arbitrarily extended the children’s detention.
Most of the men who had been detained as children and later released stated that they had been beaten during interrogation and in detention. Some also described mental and physical torture, while others said they were threatened with torture, including rape in many cases. Several said that they had been forced to confess to crimes they had not committed.
One man, who was 15 years old when he was arrested, said: “During the interrogation, [the authorities] were hitting me, and took my clothes off, and threaten[ed] me with rape … [one officer] used to come and hold my testicles and tell me to speak and to confess.”
Another man who had also been arrested when he was 15 years old described being tortured during interrogation. “During the torture, they were harassing me and touching me in private areas of my body: when I got to the [investigation unit] I couldn’t stand on my legs due to the torture that I had, so two soldiers came and carried me to the office.”
Several said they had been denied adequate medical care and adequate food. One said that he lost several teeth as a result of being denied access to dental care despite his many requests. Another said that he had scabies in detention but that authorities, including medical personnel at the prison, denied him medical care.
Several were also denied access to education, in some cases for years.
Since being released, all eight men described onerous ongoing rights restrictions, including to travel, and being denied work permits. One man said, “I want to live freely, to be able to travel, go back and forth freely, I want to be able to work wherever I want.”
While many children were released from detention in 2024, Human Rights Watch has found that others have been detained since then. One mother, whose son was arrested in August 2024 after participating in peaceful protests when he was 15, said that the authorities took her son “from the street” without notifying his family of his detention or his whereabouts for many hours. She said that authorities repeatedly extended his detention, similar to many of the other cases. “He is a good student, and he cares very much about his school, so he is very upset that he is missing classes,” she said.
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that Bahraini authorities had arrested 57 people, including at least 25 children, in relation to pro-Palestine protests in Bahrain. In three cases that Human Rights Watch documented, children were denied due process rights and denied adequate access to their families and lawyers.
ADHRB’s research indicates that this pattern of abuses has continued. In the report released today, the organization stated that since April 2024, “dozens of children have been summoned and arrested on fabricated charges linked to freedom of expression, assembly, or holding political views critical of the government.” In 11 cases that the group documented in detail, children were arbitrarily detained, were not provided with due process rights or access to their families, and were coerced into confessing to crimes “through threats and psychological and physical torture.”
This new research follows years of documentation by ADHRB, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), Human Rights Watch, and other organizations of arbitrary detention and abuse of children by Bahraini authorities.
In 2021, Human Rights Watch and BIRD reported that Bahraini authorities had beaten children arrested in protest-related cases in February 2021 and threatened them with rape and electric shocks. Police and prosecutors refused to allow parents or lawyers for the children, ages 11 to 17, to be present during their interrogations, and judges unnecessarily ordered their detention.
Also in 2021, an Al Jazeera investigation found that at least 607 detained children had been tortured by Bahraini authorities over a decade.
International law prohibits detaining children except if necessary as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period. The authorities have not explained why it was necessary to detain children who had repeatedly appeared when summoned.
Bahrain should release all children whose detention is not justifiable under the narrow conditions international law prescribes and should not prosecute or detain anyone in retaliation for their exercise of free expression rights. Governments that support Bahrain and its police and security forces, including the United States and the United Kingdom, should ensure that that they are not funding abuses and should publicly demand accountability.
Bahrain’s 2021 Restorative Justice Law for Children sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 15, but permits authorities to “place the child in a social welfare institution” for renewable weekly periods “if the circumstances require.” Bahrain should revise the law to clearly provide for a child’s right to have their parents and a lawyer present during interrogations, and to challenge their deprivation of liberty. Bahrain should also revoke the law’s determination that children who participate in unlicensed public assemblies may be considered “endangered, ”institutionalized on that basis, and deprived of their liberty.
The Bahraini government should provide appropriate remedies to people detained and abused or tortured as children, including for example by providing them with adequate access to work and education opportunities, the organizations said.
“Governments allied with Bahrain should end their whitewashing of Bahrain’s abuses against children and ensure that their support to Bahrain does not underwrite repression,” Jafarnia said.
Iraq: Personal Status Law Amendment Sets Back Women’s Rights
(Beirut) – After months of legal and political wrangling, an amendment to Iraq’s Personal Status Law that entered into force on February 17, 2025, violates women’s and girls’ rights to equality before the law and puts them at risk of other abuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Persistent pressure and advocacy by women’s rights groups partly reduced the amendment’s harm by retaining provisions for the minimum age of marriage, child custody, and polygamy, but the amended law contains other provisions that threaten women’s and girls’ rights.
Under the new law, couples concluding a marriage contract can choose whether the Personal Status Law of 1959 or a Personal Status Code (mudawana), to be developed by the Shia Ja’afari school of Islamic jurisprudence, would govern their marriage, divorce, children, and inheritance. Couples do not have the right to change their choice later. This arrangement effectively establishes separate legal regimes with different rights accorded to different sects, undermining the right to legal equality for all Iraqis found in article 14 of the constitution and international human rights law.
“It’s deeply disheartening to see Iraqi leaders move the country backward rather than forward on women and girls’ rights,” said Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Though the final text includes important revisions, particularly on the minimum age of marriage, these changes merely take the law from terrible to just plain bad.”
The final text of the amendment specifies that the minimum age of marriage in the mudawana cannot contravene the Personal Status Law. The law sets the legal age for marriage at 18, or 15 with a judge’s permission and depending on the child’s “maturity and physical capacity.” The provision in the final text alleviates concerns that the amendment would have sanctioned marriages of girls as young as 9, but still contravenes the international legal standard that the minimum age for marriage should be 18.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 28 percent of girls in Iraq are married before the age of 18. Child marriage puts girls at increased risk of sexual and physical violence, adverse physical and mental health consequences, and being denied access to education and employment.
The final text also retains the existing provisions in the Personal Status Law concerning polygamy. Article 3 of the Personal Status Law states polygamy is only allowed with the consent of a judge, who must ensure that the husband can support more than one wife and that there is a “legitimate interest.”
Regarding child custody, the amendment states that the mudawana code may not include “anything that does not align with the best interests of the children,” and guarantees the right of the parent without custody to “meet and communicate with their children in an appropriate manner, duration, and place.”
In the event of a dispute between a husband and wife over which legal regime shall apply, a judge will determine the best interest of both parties. In the previous version, the husband’s decision took precedence, in violation of Iraq’s obligations under international law to uphold equal rights for women.
The improvements in the final version of the amended law are a testament to the power of Iraqi women’s organizing and advocacy, but the law still violates’ women’s and girls’ rights, Human Rights Watch said.
Article 14 of the Iraqi constitution, as well as international human rights law, guarantee all Iraqis the right to legal equality. The amended code undermines the principle of equality before the law by establishing different legal regimes for different sects of Islam. Sunni religious scholars opposed the amendment and refused to participate in drafting their own mudawana, so only the Ja’afari school will do so.
The amendment also legalizes unregistered marriages, whose harm Human Rights Watch has extensively documented. Human Rights Watch found that unregistered marriages function as loopholes enabling child marriage in Iraq. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, 22 percent of unregistered marriages involved girls under the age of 14. It is unclear what impact the legalization of unregistered marriages will have in practice.
Women’s rights groups also fear that granting clerics the authority to conduct marriages will legalize so-called pleasure marriages. In such marriages, a cleric arranges a contract with a dowry for a limited duration, ranging from an hour to a few months. Under the contract, neither spouse receives an inheritance, and the husband is not required to pay any spousal maintenance when the contract expires. These marriages have been condemned by women’s rights groups as a vehicle for sexual exploitation.
The amendment gives the Ja’afari school four months to develop and submit the mudawana to the house of representatives, which shall be obligated to approve it and put it into effect within 30 days. This means lawmakers and the general public will not have a chance to review or vote on the mudawana before it becomes law, removing democratic oversight and granting disproportionate power to religious authorities in setting the law, Human Rights Watch said.
The full extent of the changes will not be clear until the mudawana is submitted. Yet, under the Ja’afari school, a divorced woman has no right to the marital home, spousal maintenance, or her dowry, and her children would continue living with her for only two years, regardless of their age, contingent on her not remarrying.
Parliament passed the Personal Status Law amendment alongside other legislation, including the Property Restitution Law and an amendment to the second General Amnesty Law, together in a single vote on January 21, 2025, rather than voting on each law individually. Several parliament members then filed a lawsuit with the Federal Supreme Court accusing the parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, of procedural irregularities and violations of the voting process.
On February 11, the Federal Supreme Court annulled a state order it had issued on February 4 halting enforcement of the three laws. President Abdul Latif Rashid then ratified the three laws on February 13 and they entered into force on February 17.
The amendment violates the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which Iraq ratified in 1986, by depriving women and girls of their rights on the basis of their gender. The amendment also violates the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iraq ratified in 1994, by legalizing child marriage, putting girls at risk of forced and early marriage, leaving them susceptible to sexual abuse, and not requiring decisions about children in divorce cases to be made in the best interests of the child.
The draft amendment appears to violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by depriving certain people of their rights on the basis of their religion.
“The ripple effects created by passing this law will reach far and wide, likely changing the fabric of Iraqi society at the expense of Iraqi women and girls’ independence and ability to make their own decisions,” Sanbar said.
Governments Should Step Up Support for Tibetans in Exile
Today, March 10, 2025, Tibetans worldwide commemorate the 1959 uprising in Tibet.
After nearly 70 years of repressive Chinese state rule, government policies that seek to forcibly assimilate non-Han peoples in China under President Xi Jinping represent an alarming turn for the worse for Tibetans.
While the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang received global attention, the slow drip of news about its intensifying repression against Tibetans has garnered less notice due to ever more intrusive and watertight policing, surveillance, and censorship in Tibetan areas.
In Tibet, there is no independent civil society, freedom of expression, association, assembly, or religion. Under the pretext of national policing campaigns such as “the anti-gang crime crackdown” and the “anti-fraud” crackdown, the Chinese government has decimated what little Tibetan civil society remained, shut down Tibetan websites that promote Tibetan language and culture, and closed privately funded schools; even those that followed the government-approved curriculum.
Tibetans are told how to live their lives: use Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction in schools, relocate en masse from their long-established villages to new government-built and managed settlements, silently witness their rivers being dammed to generate electricity for large-scale mining or to power regions far away in China. Any questioning of government policies, however mild, can result in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and long-term imprisonment.
Following the 1959 uprising, many Tibetans fled across the Himalayas. But even this perilous option has been closed off since the government increased policing of the border in 2008 and made it extremely difficult for Tibetans to obtain passports in 2012. Even phoning relatives living abroad has become dangerous for Tibetans in Tibet in recent years.
The Dalai Lama is 89 years old, and the Chinese government is poised to interfere and dictate the selection of the next Dalai Lama. The Tibetan government-in-exile and Tibetan civil society groups in the diaspora face uncertainty as the US government freezes foreign aid around the world. The Chinese government’s abuses beyond its borders have silenced Tibetans in Nepal and targeted those living in Western countries.
Governments that profess support for the human rights of Tibetans should step up their assistance to Tibetan groups worldwide that document rights and report on abuses in Tibet, advocate in international forums, and seek to preserve Tibetan identity and culture.
Azerbaijan’s Imprisoned Women Journalists
Nine women journalists in Azerbaijan are marking International Women’s Day behind bars or under house arrest amid the government’s relentless crackdown on critics.
Women journalists and civic activists who speak truth to power face unique risks in Azerbaijan’s patriarchal society. The authorities have a long record of subjecting them to gender-based smear campaigns and trolling in an effort to intimidate and discredit them. As an Azerbaijani woman journalist living in involuntary exile myself, the steep price of criticizing the government – including the gender-based threats – is all too familiar.
But the government’s approach to political persecution is otherwise perversely nondiscriminatory. Its wider, vicious crackdown has targeted an ever-rising number of critics and dissenting voices. Since 2023, authorities have arrested dozens of human rights defenders, journalists, and independent civic activists on politically motivated, bogus criminal charges.
Freelance reporter Fatima Movlamli was arrested just last week, on February 28, and held in pretrial detention. The spurious money laundering charges against her are part of a broader investigation against Meydan TV, an independent news outlet she collaborated with.
“I am a journalist, and I have done nothing criminal,” Movlamli wrote in a personal note following her arrest.
Movlamli is one of 20 journalists now facing trumped-up money laundering charges. They were rounded up over the course of 13 months and are from five online media outlets, Abzas Media, Meydan TV, Toplum TV, Kanal 13, and Kanal 11. Many face additional, spurious accusations of tax evasion and illegal entrepreneurship.
There are eight other women journalists in custody: Sevinj Vagifgizi, Nargiz Absalamova, and Elnara Gasimova from Abzas Media; Aynur Elgunash, Aytaj Ahmadova, Aysel Umudova, and Khayala Aghayeva from Meydan TV; and Shahnaz Beylerqizi from Toplum TV.
On February 26, authorities transferred Beylerqizi to house arrest due to a deteriorating health condition, but she faces a prison sentence if convicted.
No journalist should pay for their work with their freedom. Azerbaijani authorities should immediately drop the bogus charges and free all jailed journalists and other activists, allowing them to do their work without government interference.
UN Panel Discusses Need for Stronger Protections for Platform Workers
Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) held a panel discussion on the challenges to realizing the rights to work and social security in the informal economy. One critical issue raised was the growth of platform work, known as gig work, where workers find and perform jobs through digital labor platforms like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart.
While platform companies promote flexibility, the reality for many workers is exclusion from labor and social security rights.
As Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif noted: “We find ourselves at a moment of considerable change in the world of work. Rapidly evolving technologies are transforming jobs. These technologies have brought improvements to workplace safety and have provided greater flexibility for workers. But they also carry risks and need to be managed responsibly.”
Human Rights Watch research in the United States, Georgia, Mexico, and the European Union shows that without proper regulation, platform companies regularly misclassify workers as independent contractors to cut costs and evade employer obligations. They shift business costs and risks onto workers while routinely paying below the minimum wage, denying workers compensation for job-related injuries, and avoiding contributions to social security programs.
In Texas, we found that some full-time platform workers earned just 30 percent of a living wage. An accident, sudden illness, or wrongful termination could push them into debt or homelessness, while the companies they work for expand their market share and social security systems lose out on critical funding.
Our research further found that platform companies use opaque algorithms, surveillance technologies, and behavioral tactics to control workers while maintaining the illusion that they work independently.
This is not some benign innovation—it is the erosion of labor rights.
Governments should take action to ensure that platform work does not become a loophole for exploitation and instead contribute to building a human rights economy. Governments should:
Strengthen employment classification laws to prevent misclassification.Extend wage protections, social security, and workplace safety protections to platform workers.Ensure algorithmic management of workers is fair and transparent.Support an international convention to safeguard platform workers’ rights at the International Labour Conference in 2025 and 2026.Without reforms, platform work risks deepening economic inequalities and further entrenching what the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights referred to as “in-work poverty” in his 2023 report to the UN General Assembly.
Cricket Council: Address Taliban Ban on Women Athletes
(New York) – The International Cricket Council should immediately suspend Taliban-run Afghanistan’s membership until women and girls can participate in the sport of cricket, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the council’s chair, Jay Shah, that was made public today. The championship of the men’s Champions Trophy 2025 international cricket tournament, featuring eight teams including Afghanistan, takes place on March 9, 2025, in Dubai.
Since taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have banned all sports for women and girls, forcing many athletes into hiding. Members of Afghanistan’s women’s national cricket team fled the country but have continued to practice and want to be recognized to compete internationally like the men’s national team. The International Cricket Council has recognized and supported Afghanistan’s men’s cricket but has ignored repeated appeals from the women’s national team.
“The International Cricket Council’s silence on the Taliban’s discriminatory prohibition on Afghan women and girls playing sports shows disturbing disregard for fundamental human rights,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed policies on women and girls that bar them from secondary and higher education and severely restrict employment, freedom of expression and movement, as well as banning sports and other outdoor activities.”
The Taliban have banned all sports for women and girls, closed sports training centers, and threatened women athletes. As a result, some Afghan women and girls who are athletes have fled the country and have had to rebuild their lives and sports careers in exile. Others were unable to leave, went into hiding, and sought to destroy evidence of their ties to sports, including medals and sport kits.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), the governing body for global sport, recognized and financially supported Afghan women athletes living abroad to compete at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
Many members of the Afghan women’s national cricket team have continued training and playing in Australia. They played an exhibition match in January, when co-captain Firooza Amiri told the Associated Press that her team represents “millions of women in Afghanistan who are denied their rights.”
The International Cricket Council’s anti-discrimination policy states that it is “committed to ensuring that wherever cricket is played, it can be enjoyed by all players, player support personnel, officials, spectators, commercial partners and others” without discrimination on the basis of “gender, sexual orientation, disability, marital status and/or maternity status.”
Under international cricket rules, member countries are required to recognize a women’s team for their men’s team to play internationally. Afghanistan has not met this requirement since August 2021. Afghan women cricket players say they have written to the International Cricket Council for support and recognition but have never received a response.
“It’s so painful and so disappointing,” Shabnam Ahsan, a cricket player, told the BBC in February. “I don't understand why they [the International Cricket Council] are not doing anything to help us. We have worked so hard, and we deserve help just like every other team.”
The International Cricket Council should adopt and carry out a human rights policy aligned with United Nations standards and:
Suspend Afghanistan’s men’s national team until the women’s team can play;Support Afghanistan’s women’s national team in exile; andCondition sponsorship on gender equality compliance.Corporate sponsors of international cricket include Coca-Cola, Emirates, and Aramco, among others.
“With cricket entering the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, global sponsors of cricket and the International Olympic Committee can no longer ignore the Taliban’s blatant gender discrimination and violation of Olympic principles,” Worden said. “The International Cricket Council has the responsibility to ensure its systems do not ignore, or worse, encourage systematic gender discrimination.”